5 Strange Ancient Customs You Probably Never Heard of In History Class

From injurious bloodletting to suffocating Victorian corsets, you think you’ve heard it all when it comes to outlandish rituals we’ve abandoned, thankfully. Well, if you aren’t familiar with these 5 ancient customs, you will definitely have some interesting conversation starters, but you might not want to talk about them at the dinner table. Read on to discover more bizarre things humans did back it the day.

Before there was Golden Milk Tea, There Was “Golden” Mouthwash

Ancient Romans used both human and animal urine, yes pee, as mouthwash. But there’s some science behind it- urine contains ammonia, which is both an efficient and natural cleaning agent. Ammonia is still used today in everything from household cleaners to fertilizer. It gets stubborn stains out of your ovens and bathtubs and also make you crystal set nice and shiny. The Romans also used urine to wash their clothes.

The Merciless “sati” Ritual- Why Sucked To Become A Widow In Ancient India

From around 320 A.D. to as far as 1829 ancient Indians practiced a Hindu costume called Sati, which required that widows be burned alive on their late husband’s pyre. By doing so, these loyal wives would follow their husbands into the afterlife.This ritual was supposedly “voluntary”; however, there are many accounts of women being thrown into the fire against their will. Although this violent ritual has been outlawed, it even still happens today on rare occasions.

“Pearly Whites” Were Not Desirable In Some Parts Of The World

Ohaguro (or ‘blackened teeth’) was practiced in Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, South America and Japan. Teeth blackening was mostly practiced by women, starting from puberty. It was done primarily to prevent tooth decay, thus preserving teeth into old age (and did so successfully, we should add). But later black teeth was associated with beauty and sexual maturity. This custom is still practiced today in some parts of Asia.

The Walking Dead- Living Mummies In China And Japan

Between 1081 and 1903, Chinese, and later Japanese, Buddhist monks engaged in the self-mutilating experience of Self Mummification, while still being alive! Because the early Chinese believed that the soul was made of multiple parts, and after death, these parts dissipated. In order to keep these “parts” together, and thus, continuing living as spiritual forms of energy, they had to leave the body intentionally- which meant being completely aware at the moment of death. In recorded that some Ch’an monks were found naturally mummified, while still sitting in a meditative posture. This practice was banned in the late 1860’s.

The Original “Children Of The Corn”

Artificial cranial deformation, also known as head binding, was a common practice of the ancient Maya, and strangely enough, of various other cultures around the globe. The Maya worshiped, Yum Kaax, the Maize (corn) god, who was regarded as their ideal of beauty. Just as corn elongates at the top, they would intentionally deform their heads to resemble ears of maize, which they deemed attractive. They achieved this desired look by bounding infants heads between wooden boards within days after birth, when the skull is most pliable, up until around 6 months.

The Wisdom Segment

I
The Stone Age was a prehistoric period which paved the way for the use of the very first tools (which were all made from stone). These tools usually had a point, an edge, or a concave surface. This period in ancient history lasted for 3.4 million years and was replaced with metal works between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE.

II
Fossilized animal bones with tool marks have been found in Ethiopia and dated at about 3.4 million years old. This makes them the oldest indirect evidence of stone tool use. In 2015, further excavations in Kenya revealed the earliest proof of hominin use of tools, indicating that Kenyanthropus platyops (a hominin fossil discovered in 1999) might have been the first known tool-user.

III
Stone tools such as chert and flint were shaped and used in different applications from cutting tools to weapons. Other materials were also used as tools, including bone, wood, shells, and deer antlers. During this time, pottery was also being made out of clay, and animal domestication had also been practiced.

IV
Throughout Eastern Europe and Siberia, huts made from mammoth bones have been found, leading experts to believe that the people responsible for making the huts were expert mammoth hunters. Other examples of mammoth huts were found along the Dnieper river valley of Ukraine, in the Czech Republic, and southern Poland.

V
The technique of ore smelting marked the beginning of the Bronze Age. At this point of transition, the most significant manufactured metal was bronze, made by combining tin and copper, which had been smelted separately. This early part of the Bronze age was also known as the Chalcolithic "copper-stone" period.

VI
Between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE, the majority of the population was living in North Africa and Eurasia. Human metallurgy dates back to the 5th or 6th millennium BCE, in the area of Plonik in modern-day Serbia. The earliest evidence of it coming in the form of a copper ax belonging to the Vinca culture, from 5500 BCE.